~ simply feisty seeds

A Little Love for Hennepin County Library’s New Catalog

My public library has gone and done a number on me. Last week they implemented a new catalog. It’s one of those more social media-like ones where you can follow other patrons and share lists and rate and review books and probably a few more things I haven’t figured out yet. It’s a big change from the old catalog and at first I grumbled because the lists feature of the old catalog is not the same as the new one.

In the new system, lists are curated collections of books on a particular topic. So, for instance, my list of cycling books is great. My TBR priority list consisting of a mish-mash of books I really want to read as soon as I am able, however, is not. For this I am now supposed to use the “shelves” feature. There are three shelves, Completed, In Progress and For Later.

The Completed shelf is pretty spiffy because now I can keep track of books I have borrowed and will know whether I already looked at that gardening book. In Progress is self-explanatory. For Later is now where I am supposed to save my TBR books. I only get one “shelf” instead of my multiple lists. How the heck am I supposed to find anything?

Oh lovely library, I thought you were going to let me down but you have not! They have a content filter bar on the side of the page that matches the content on my shelf from fiction and nonfiction to adult and children’s to genre, topic and author. It’s pretty cool actually. But how will I know what my priority books are? There is a feature that allows me to “add details” to each item and I can use tags and make notes. I can also very easily place a hold from my shelf and move it to the In Progress shelf. And, a cool feature I discovered today, when I login to my account, I get a page that will tell me what books on my For Later shelf are currently available for immediate request. That might be dangerous!

All my lists from the old catalog transferred over to the new, but now I will want to move all those books to my shelf. I have many lists with a total of over 300 items between them (don’t judge!). I was worried it would be tedious but it turns out the lists have a nice button for putting the book on my shelf. Not so bad. The only ones that will take some extra time are the 50 or so books on my priority list that I will now have to tag. Maybe having to move them all will help me reconsider my priorities because really, how can one make fifty books a priority? That’s almost an entire year’s worth of reading. And if I can’t even read the twenty or so books on my reading table, those priority books are going nowhere.

Good job Hennepin County Library! I love the new catalog and feel so lucky to have such a great public library system.

Do any of you have a public library with nifty catalog features? What are they, how do you use them, and do you like them?

Brian Joseph, take a look, they might have some really useful and fun features. New technology done well that fills a purpose and isn’t just for the sake of something new really can do wonderful things 🙂

I am a luddite at heart and don’t explore all that the library has to offer electronically. I did like the online feature for renewing books I had out…until I found out that it didn’t always go through, and it was more reliable to call the circulation desk on the telephone and ask them to renew my books.

I am surprised about the list for completed books in light of the very strong efforts libraries have made to maintain patron privacy rights. I assume the completed list is something you have to populate and that it’s not automatically created based upon what you check out and return but I still am surprised that they want to start down that path. My local library is adamant that they “lose” all information after a short period of time.

Karen, I have to create the list myself, it doesn’t populate automatically. Also I can make it private if I want to so no one else has access to it. All of the new features can be private or public, or a person can choose to not use them all.

It’s funny how each library system’s online catalog is different, isn’t it? For example, in the county in which I reside, I can go online and see everything I’ve checked out in the previous year. But at the library system in which I work, we do not keep a list of what people have checked out. I have had so many people ask me if we have such a feature, because they can’t remember if they’ve read so-and-so. Anyway, it’s all very idiosyncratic and I think your library system is very evolved to have such in-depth “shelves” and such! (Ours is not so evolved – yet.)

Laila, the university library where I work does not keep a history of borrowed items which would be handy sometimes if we did for students and professors but the system we use is all or nothing and we have gone with the nothing option for privacy reasons. The public library’s new system allows a patron to choose to make lists and shelves public or private which is nice. I don’t know what the librarian side of things looks like though and whether they can see my history or not. Plus I am not very worried about government snooping in my records. They could just follow my blog! 🙂

Have fun exploring the new library catalog! This sounds very similar to what my public library has, which I am a bit embarrassed to admit I don’t know how long we’ve had this for! I’ve just started using the “For Later” shelf to remind me of books I want to check out eventually. This also helps as I can only put 5 books on hold at a time. Hope you are having a great weekend!

My local library has a similar catalog. Two concerns in the comments are non-existent in my library’s catalog. Within my account, I can set it to be completely private so that only I can view the Completed, In Progress, and For Later shelves. And I have to manually move a book from one list to another. The library system doesn’t do that.

My only frustration with the filters is that I haven’t figured out how to filter for only one of the branches from which I borrow, so that I can easily see what’s available at the branch near me no matter what part of town I’m in.

Susan, our libraries must be using the same or similar system because mine is totally like that too! I hope you figure out the branch filter. I don’t stop by the library spur of the moment so I don’t need to filter for where the books are in the whole system, I just stop by when I get an email 🙂

Have no idea, Stefanie, I have used my local library once in the last three or so years. I have so many books here to read I have no desire to borrow or reserve any. Boring I know. BUT, if I did want to use my library I’d be thrilled with these features!

whisperinggums, you surprise me that you haven’t been to your local library in the 3 years! I would have pegged you for an avid user. I have plenty of books at home too but that doesn’t seem to stop me from using the library 😀

My public library catalog has also been slowly morphing into a more social media friendly environment. I do use some of the lists (and I think they are not private, but I have not noticed any commenters) but mostly I just go in and do requests and don’t bother with any of the other bells and whistles. At least they have been slowly adding things so I catch little changes but it seems like there is time to get used to them before the next one is introduced. I do find myself looking at the other reader’s comments–interestingly they are readers from any other library using the same system and not just Omaha readers.

Danielle, that’s interesting about reader comments! I will have to see if it is the same with the new system here. There is something to be said for a gradual introduction of new features. We just got new computers at work yesterday and we are now using Windows 10 and everyone is getting upset because where did this thing I liked to use so much go? It was a big change and everything is really different and will take some getting used to.